Tesla holds 80% of US EV market despite losing federal tax credit

Tesla is still holding about 80% of the US electric vehicle market despite buyers not having access to the federal tax credit anymore unlike they do for some of the competition.

According to data gathered by Buy Shares, Tesla has maintained an 81.66% market share of the EV market in the US during the first half of 2020:

“Data presented by Buy Shares indicates that Tesla unsurprisingly accounted for 81.66% of all-electric vehicles sold in the United States as of the first half of 2020. During the period, a total of 87,398 electric vehicles were sold in the US with Tesla accounting for 71,375. The company’s popular Tesla Model 3 was the highest-selling with 38,314 units.”

It’s important to note that Tesla doesn’t disclose its sales per market and registration data is not readily available everywhere in the US and, therefore, some of the sale data for Tesla is estimated:

What is most impressive is out of the top first five cars on the list, four are Tesla vehicles and all have no access to the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.

Both Tesla and GM buyers don’t have access to the federal tax credit since they both reached the threshold of 200,000 vehicles delivered in the US and completed the phase-out period that it triggered.

However, overall sales are down, but that can be attributed to the pandemic affecting sales.

Electrek’s Take

A lot of people were down on Tesla’s US sales without the federal tax credit, which is kind of unfairly set-up to disadvantage automakers who were early with electric vehicles.

Now, it looks like it’s not a big problem.

However, I think Tesla is not really feeling the impact of major EV competition in the US.

That might change next year with the e-tron’s price drop and new EVs like the Mustang Mach-E, Audi e-tron Q4, and others hitting the market.

But I think Tesla will still do well with more variants of the Model Y hitting higher production and new versions of the Model S and Model X.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.